Principal’s Report

Dear St Teresa’s families,

Welcome to our first online newsletter. Hopefully it will improve communication between families and the College. Last week the Marine studies students attended an excursion to Lady Elliott Island and the Year 9 went on their outdoor education camp. Both these activities were thoroughly enjoyed by the staff and students. My thanks to Mr Rob Smith for organising the Marine studies camp and to Mrs Michaela Roberton and Mr Ken Kiernan for the Year 9 camp. A lot of preparation and work from all the staff who attended made these activities so worthwhile. Well done to all.

Last Friday we had a few visitors at the college assessing our application for funding Stage 5 of our building program which consists of the construction of an 8 classroom block in the senior school as well as extension of our car park, new toilets, graphics and systems room. We will know in August if our application is successful.

I am looking forward to our Opening of stage 3 and 4 on the 24th May so that we as a community can celebrate our wonderful facilities. I hope that many of our families will attend this celebration.

This year, for the first time, students in Year 9 throughout Australia, will sit the same national literacy and numeracy tests. These tests replace the existing state based tests. On Tuesday, May 13 two tests will be administered. These include: Language Conventions (testing spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Writing. Reading skills will be tested on Wednesday, May 14 with Numeracy tested on Thursday, May 15. These literacy and numeracy tests form a key part of the National Assessment Program endorsed by all Australian Ministers for Education. The aim of the tests is to provide a measure of how Australian schools and students are performing in the areas of reading, writing, spelling and numeracy. Parents should also know that the tests are for the first time set against National Statements of Learning and not the Queensland curriculum as has been the case in previous years.

Our school is obliged under the Accreditation Act to use the Queensland curriculum however those documents do not yet precisely reflect the National Statements. This will be a challenge in the short term; your student is certainly learning the content and concepts contained within the Statements but because of where they are placed in the current syllabi, they may not have been covered fully by the time of the test in May. We have been carefully monitoring the development of these Statements of Learning and doing our best to embed them appropriately into school programmes. Please keep the year 9 students in your prayers as they sit for these tests.

God bless
Alain